Nobody home.
Dre Janssen? After five already. Bayside Video would be closed by the time he made it to Chesnut Street. Janssen and Myers could both wait until later. Rose Youngblood? She should be home by this time. No need to see her in person; he used his cell.
She answered almost immediately. He identified himself, listened to her voice turn flat when he told her he had nothing to report yet, just a more few questions.
“Have you heard from your son since we spoke on Friday?” he asked.
“No. I went to his apartment on Saturday, but he wasn’t home.”
“Did you go inside?”
“Of course not. I’m not that kind of parent. I respect my son’s privacy.”
“Do you know a woman friend of his named Brandy?”
“Brandy? No.”
“He never mentioned the name?”
“I’ve never heard of anyone named Brandy.”
“She seems to know you. Quite a bit about you, anyway.”
“Brian must have told her. Who is she?”
“Not your son’s usual kind of friend.” He offered a capsule description without any of the details.
Hum on the line for a time before she said, “I had no idea Brian knew anyone as… coarse as that. I can’t imagine why… oh.” The last word was small and disapproving. She’d just imagined why. But then she talked herself out of it by saying, “No, he’d wouldn’t have anything to do with a woman like that. Not in that way. He’s a good Christian, my son. No, absolutely not.”
He let it go. Good mothers, particularly strongly religious mothers, were unreliable witnesses. They almost always believed, no matter how much evidence was presented to them, that their children were innocent creatures incapable of making the wrong choices, committing the kinds of sins they themselves would never dream of committing.
H e ate his dinner in the coffee shop on the corner of Nineteenth Avenue and Taraval. The woman with the scarf wasn’t there; he hadn’t expected her to be.
Hadn’t expected to do what he did when he finished eating, either. Just went ahead and did it, without conscious thought and against his better judgment, from some inner compulsion that he couldn’t or wouldn’t let himself identify.
He talked to both waitresses and a couple of customers, learned nothing, and then began canvassing the neighborhood for somebody who could tell him who she was.
9
Some days you’d be better off staying in bed with the covers pulled over your head.
You know the kind I mean. You wake up feeling out of sorts. The weather is lousy, cold and gray, and everything seems to be a source of irritation. Things like this happen: You cut yourself shaving, you squish barefoot into a deposit of strategically placed cat barf, little squabbles over nothing flare up to mar the normally comfortable breakfast-table atmosphere. Then you venture out into the damn city. Traffic seems heavier and some idiot cuts you off and one of the jet-propelled variety of lunatics runs a red light and nearly causes a collision. And then you arrive at the office and the day plunges downhill in earnest.
Wednesday was like that for me. Kerry calls Wednesdays hump days, a workplace term that means it’s the middle of the week and once noon comes and goes, you’re over the hump and heading for the weekend. This Wednesday was hump day, all right. In spades and with a whole new meaning to the term. Wednesday was the humper and I was the humpee.
Tamara had nothing to do with it; she was in a good mood and gave me no reason to growl at her personally. It was her answer to my simple question, “Any messages?” that provoked the initial growling and grumbling.
“Four,” she said. “All from the same person, about every ten minutes since I got here at nine.”
“And who would that be?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Then don’t tell me.”
“Mitchell Krochek,” she said.
“You were right, I don’t like it. What does he want now?”
“Wouldn’t say. Wouldn’t even leave you a voice mail. Just wants you to call him at his home number.”
“His wife must’ve run off again.”
“Well, he sounded pretty strung out.”
“What does he expect us to do? We can’t keep finding her and dragging her back every time she-”
The telephone cut me off.
“Want to bet who that is?” Tamara said.
When I got on the line, Krochek said, “Thank God. Man, I’ve been going crazy waiting here. Didn’t your girl give you my message?”
“I just got in. And she’s not my girl, she’s my partner. She runs this agency.”
“Yeah, right, sorry, I’m not thinking straight. Listen, something’s happened. Can you come over here right away? My house?”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly, but it’s bad. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice, “Why not?”
“Something you have to see first.”
“Look, Mr. Krochek…”
“I didn’t know anybody else to call. I need help, your kind of help.”
“Why don’t you come over here and we’ll talk about it-”
“No. It has to be here. As soon as possible.” His voice kept climbing, loud enough so that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. The raw edge of desperation in it sounded genuine. “I’ll pay you five hundred dollars if you’ll come right away. Will you? Please?”
I wanted to say no. I’d had enough of Krochek and his wife and their problems. Maybe I would have said no if I’d had morning appointments, pressing business, but my calendar was right there in front of me and there was nothing on it except routine business that I could deal with anytime. Besides, it was one of those days anyway, and I’ve always been a sucker for people in need. Heart full of mush, head full of rocks.
“Please?” Krochek said again. Begging now. The word had a moist sound.
“All right. But no promises for anything more than a few minutes’ talk.”
“That’s all I ask. Right away?”
“As soon as I can get there.”
He thanked me, twice. Then he said, “I’ll have the five hundred in cash,” and broke the connection.
I resisted an impulse to slam the receiver down. Tamara had been hanging around listening; she grinned at me from the connecting doorway.
“Don’t say it,” I said.
“Say what?”
“He offered me five hundred bucks for a brief conference. That’s the only reason I’m going.”
She laughed as if I’d said something funny.
M itchell Krochek must have been waiting on his front patio; he opened the gate and stuck his head out as soon as I pulled into the driveway. He looked rumpled even from a distance: hair uncombed, floppy slippers on his feet, one tail of his shirt hanging out over a pair of faded Levi’s. Up close, he had the bleary-eyed, saggy look that comes from too much alcohol and too little sleep. Anxiety showed plainly in his eyes. Something else, too: fear.
“I thought you’d changed your mind,” he said.
It had taken me more than an hour and a half to make the drive. More annoyances: construction slowdown on the bridge, and even though Janice Krochek’s directions were still relatively fresh in my mind, I’d gotten lost twice in the maze of Oakland Hills streets and had to stop to consult my map. But all I said to him was, “I’m here now. What’s going on?”
“Come on inside. I’ll show you.”
He led me into the house. Cool in there, almost chilly. And gloomy; there were a lot of arched windows, but all of them were draped in patterned monk’s cloth. Tile floors, white stucco walls decorated with Mediterranean-style artwork. I don’t know much about art, but the paintings and sculptures seemed original and expensive. Here and there were bare patches where other paintings had once hung. If I’d asked about them, I was pretty sure the answer would be that his wife had sold some of their mor
e valuable pieces to support her habit.
The kitchen was where we went. Big, wide, with a tiled rectangle in the center that held a stovetop, sinks, a dish-washer. The windows here were unshaded, and above the rectangle were a couple of skylights that let in plenty of gray daylight. No sun today, not in the city and not over here.
Krochek stepped around the far side of the rectangle, giving me room to join him. He said, pointing, “There. On the floor.”
I went and looked. Hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
Spots and smeared stains, dark and crusty on the light-colored tiles. An uneven trail that led from near the rectangle to an open door at the far end-a laundry room, looked like. I got down on one knee for a closer look at the stains. When I rubbed a finger lightly over one, it came away with a few dry flakes clinging to it. One of the spots was still sticky.
“It’s blood, isn’t it,” Krochek said.
“It’s blood. When did you find this?”
“Last night when I got home. I came out here for a drink of water …”
“What time?”
“Must’ve been close to midnight.”
“And no sign of your wife?”
“No. I looked everywhere in the house, outside, even in the garage. Her clothes are still in her closet.”
“Anything missing out here?”
“Missing?”
“Kitchen utensils. The sharp kind.”
“… Oh. No, the knife rack’s full except for the one there by the sink.”
I went over and looked. No stains on the shiny blade of the butcher knife on the drainboard. Dirty dishes cluttered the sink, giving off a faintly sour smell.
“I don’t suppose you called the police.”
“Christ, no,” Krochek said. “You know the first thing they’ll think, don’t you?”
“So you called me instead.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
Yeah. “More blood in that room back there?”
“A little, not much.”
“Anywhere else in the house?”
“No. Here, just here and the laundry room.”
“Anything else out of the ordinary? Signs of disturbance?”
“No. Just the blood.”
“You keep a gun in the house?”
“Gun? No. I wouldn’t know how to use one.”
“Does your wife?”
“No way. She’s afraid of guns.”
“That’s a good thing to be. The laundry room have an outside door?”
He nodded. “It was unlocked.”
“You look around outside?”
“Last night and again this morning. Nothing.”
“When did you last see your wife?”
“Yesterday morning, before I left for work.”
“How did she seem then? Her mood, frame of mind.”
“I don’t know. She was asleep, or pretended to be.”
“How was she the night before?”
“Twitchy and bitchy. Her middle names.”
“Did you take her to see a doctor?”
“She wouldn’t go. Just kept saying she didn’t need one.”
“And I don’t suppose she gave you any idea of who beat her up?”
“She wouldn’t talk about it. Didn’t have much to say to me at all. She stayed in one of the guest rooms Monday night, drinking.”
“Receive or make any phone calls?”
“Not that I know about,” Krochek said. “I checked the answering machine. No messages.”
“Did you talk to your neighbors, find out if they know anything?”
“No. I didn’t want to talk to anybody until I talked to you. Wouldn’t do any good anyway. People mind their own business up here.”
“Rebecca Weaver seemed pretty interested on Monday.”
“That’s because she was out front when you brought Janice home. She’s not usually nosy.”
“You said you got home around midnight. Why?”
“I don’t… what do you mean?”
“Why so late? You had a battered wife and an iffy situation here. Where were you?”
Eyeshift. “A business dinner, I couldn’t get out of it-”
“Don’t lie to me, Mr. Krochek. Not anymore. Not if you want my help.”
He gave his lower lip a workout before he said, “All right. I was with a… friend.”
“What friend? What’s her name?”
“Do you have to know that?”
“What’s her name?”
“Deanne Goldman. She works for another firm down on the Square. We
… she has an apartment near Lake Merritt… Look, you have to understand. There’s been nothing physical between Janice and me for more than two years. A man has needs, you know how that is…”
Justifying himself. His kind of man always does, to others and to himself. I said, “How long has it been going on?”
“A few weeks.”
She wouldn’t be the first. Nor the last, probably. Janice Krochek, in the Hillman last week: You think he’s some kind of saint? Well, he’s not. Far from it. Some pair. A pair I wished now more than ever that I’d never drawn.
“Will she verify you were with her?”
“Yes, sure, if it comes to that. But I didn’t go over to her apartment until after seven.”
“No?”
“I worked until five-thirty, had a couple of drinks and a sandwich at the Ladderback.”
“Alone?”
“Alone,” Krochek said. “I didn’t talk to anybody except the waitress and she was busy as hell. Is there any way to tell what time this… whatever it was… happened? From the blood, I mean.”
“Not exactly. Not now.”
“You see? If I call the cops, they’ll think I came here after work and… you know, that I did something to Janice. Because of all the trouble we’ve been having, the money she’s blown. They’ll think it was a fight and I killed her. You know they will.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No!” He looked stricken, as if I’d betrayed him somehow. “I swear to God, I didn’t have anything to do with this!”
“Take it easy, hang onto yourself,” I said. “Let’s go outside-through the laundry room. Watch where you walk-don’t step in those blood marks.”
He nodded jerkily, led the way into the laundry room. Without touching anything, I looked around in there for signs of disturbance. Nothing. Krochek opened the back door. Tiled patio strewn with outdoor furniture, close-clipped lawn surrounding a kidney-shaped swimming pool with an electric-powered cover drawn over it. Nothing to see on the tiles. On the edge of the lawn near the back-door path there was a short, narrow, crescent-shaped gouge where something heavy had cut into the grass. Not fresh but not too old, either; the mashed-down grass inside the gouge hadn’t browned yet. I asked Krochek if it had been there before yesterday.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “Might’ve been. Damn gardener gets careless sometimes.”
Nothing on the path that led around the side and through a tall locked gate to the driveway. You could get into the garage from the yard; the door there was unlocked. I opened it and looked inside. Empty except for gardening implements and the usual garage clutter. Krochek’s Porsche Boxster was parked in the driveway.
We went back into the house. I had Krochek show me the bedroom his wife had occupied Monday night. Rumpled bed, stink of stale cigarette smoke, bottle of Scotch and a smudged glass on the nightstand, the bloodstained clothes she’d been wearing on Monday tossed haphazardly on the floor. Nothing else out of place. Nothing to grab my attention in the adjoining bathroom. We went into his bedroom, the rest of the rooms in the house. Nothing.
The formal living room was the last of them. He flopped into a leather sling chair and massaged his face with the heels of his hands. “Now what?” he said.
“My advice is to call the police. Right now.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t.”
“It’s the right thing, the s
mart thing.”
“No.” His head jerked up. “You’re not going to call them on your own, are you? Without my consent?”
“Not without more evidence that a crime was committed here.”
“That’s right,” he said, as if another thought had struck him. “That’s right. It could’ve been some kind of accident. Janice cut herself with a knife or something. And then called a cab to take her to an ER.”
Not too likely, given the blood marks and the way they stopped just short of the laundry room, and the rest of the circumstances. But I said, “It’s possible. You could try calling hospitals in the area.”
“Yeah. I’m going to clean up those stains, too. I almost did it last night. That’s what I should’ve done.”
Instead of waiting to call me, he meant. “I wouldn’t advise it,” I said.
“Why not?”
“If a crime has been committed here, you’d be guilty of destroying evidence. Police forensics could find traces of blood no matter how many times you scrubbed the kitchen floor.”
“There’s not that much. It could be anybody’s.” He massaged his face again. “Christ. You really think she’s dead?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure I care if she is… no, that’s not true, of course I care. I don’t know what I’m saying. I just want this nightmare to be over with.”
“What is it you want me to do, Mr. Krochek?”
“Find Janice. Find out what happened here.”
“I don’t know that I can do that. It may not be possible.”
“But you can try. You can try.”
His eyes pleaded with me. He was close to the edge of panic; you could see it in the twist of his expression, the tautness of his body, the compulsive face-rubbing. I didn’t much like the man-weak, selfish people leave me cold-but from his actions and emotional reactions I was pretty sure he wasn’t responsible for whatever had gone down here yesterday or last night. And he did seem to have some feelings left for his wife and her safety, despite all she’d put him through. I had sympathy for him, as I did for any poor schmuck who found himself backed into a corner through the actions of others. I could not walk away from him, much as I would have liked to.
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